Galley Girl: The Pleasure Edition

In 1982, psychologist Carol Gilligan's book about adolescent girls, "In a Different Voice," became an influential international bestseller. In 1996, TIME named Gilligan, by then a Harvard professor, one of the 25 most influential people in the U.S. In May, Knopf will publish Gilligan's new book, "The Birth of Pleasure," which Kirkus calls "an intellectual tour de force." According to Gilligan's publisher, her new book "explores the ways that humans experience and express love. Tracing a lineage from classical mythology to our own intimate relationships, Gilligan shows us why love between a man and a woman is so often burdened by a history of loss and how it can be freed and opened to the pursuit of happiness. Gilligan draws on her own interviews with couples and children — as well as Shakespeare's plays, Freud's case histories, the diary of Anne Frank, and the novels of Hawthorne, Proust, Toni Morrison, and Michael Ondaatje — to offer a radical new map of love." In June, Gilligan will become a faculty member at NYU, in the schools of education and law.

I'M CAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE:

In February, Hyperion plans to publish a book that will make women wince: "Cad: Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor" by Rick Marin, a former senior writer at Newsweek and former reporter for the New York Times Sunday Styles section. According to his publisher, "After a doomed marriage dissolves into divorce, journalist Rick Marin goes from devoted husband to serial dater, and embarks on a sort of rampage, dating and sleeping his way through the ranks of New York's women. Marin's behavior becomes increasingly ungentlemanlike — in fact, he becomes something of a cad. In this finely written, wildly entertaining, and alternately humorous, obnoxious and poignant memoir, Marin takes us down with him into the depths of what he calls 'bachelor hell,' and then back up again and eventually into the arms of a new love."

LONG BEACH:

Bestselling author James Patterson, with co-writer Peter de Jonge, turns out yet another hefty novel, "The Beach House" (Little, Brown; June 10). PW calls it, "a slick, vastly enjoyable yet far-fetched thriller — i.e. typical Patterson. Its hero is a Columbia University law student, Jack Mullen, who's out to avenge the death of his younger brother, Peter, found dead on the Amagansett, L.I., property of the immensely wealthy Neubauer family, a few miles from Jack and Peter's Montauk home. The cops say Peter drowned; a glance at the corpse tells Jack that his brother was beaten to death...FORECAST: Patterson might as well have called this one 'The Beach Novel,' because it's the hardcover people will be reading at the Hamptons and elsewhere this summer. His planned five-city author tour will only help sustain its inevitable position atop bestseller list." Naturally, Patterson's publisher is grateful to this cash-register-friendly author. A few weeks ago, we went to a lavish Little, Brown dinner at Le Cirque in Patterson's honor. Foie gras, anyone?

MIDEASTERN LIT: